Orange Suspends Bold Sales & RIM Admits Storm Rejection

The sheen behind the impressive BlackBerry Storm launch this week has been slightly tarnished with some breaking developments from Orange, but then immediately buffed following some wonderfully frank talking from RIM’s CEO…
Doing the damage are widespread reports that Orange UK has been forced to pull the much anticipated and (we can confirm) highly impressive BlackBerry Bold today after last minute software issues with the device were claimed to be reported across multiple networks. So far however Orange is the only one who has taken such drastic action.

A fix isn’t expected for a couple of weeks too so if you’ve been hankering for your Orangey Bold upgrade you’re going to have to be patient again.

”In related news”, RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis has admitted with refreshing honesty (and a strong sign of his confidence in the final version of the Storm) that the first version of the company’s touchscreen handset failed to meet approval from primary network partner Vodafone.
“I thought that when we put Quadband EDGE and GPS and a powerful CPU and high-performance graphics cards on one tiny board, I figured that that was enough of a breakthrough and Vodafone sent me packing!?” he explained.

Well said, Vodafone – can you seriously imagine the Storm without HSDPA?

Ironically, the announcement of the Storm and the potential delay of the Bold could end up pitting the two handsets against one another. With both likely to be free on £35pm contracts and above this could be the clearest indication yet whether we still love our keys or if touchscreen is about to conquer all…